About Me

Monday, September 2, 2013

One week
ago today, I woke up a little before my alarm went off.I decided that I would enjoy the quiet time
and headed downstairs.When I got to the
bottom of the stairs, something to my right caught my attention.

The
front door was open.Not open as in
unlocked.Standing wide open. Open. As
in I was looking outside at my front yard. I called for Chad and we immediately
we checked the house out.Nothing appeared
out of place.

We both were completely unsure of
why the door was open and the alarm was off.After a few minutes, we decided that we just got distracted when we were
locking up and in the process of letting Paddington (our canine son) out, we
just totally missed it.Really, there is
no other explanation.

You
better believe that come Monday evening, we double checked everything!
After the last recheck, I settled in and went to sleep much faster than
normal.

Shortly
after midnight I woke up after the single most disturbing, terrifying, heart
wrenching dream I have ever had.While I
will not get into the details of that dream (mainly because they were so
Biblically inaccurate) I will simply say…God used it to imprint something on my
heart.THAT is what I am sharing
here.

First
of all, it has taken me a week to process the two events and see that He was
using them to teach me something.Honestly, I wasn’t even going to blog about it, but the overwhelming
urge to do so this morning has overruled my desire to just keep it to
myself.

Tuesday
morning after God woke me up from this dream, I went to check on my girls.I did something that I haven’t done in a
while, but after what I had just experienced, I HAD to.I curled up on their bed besides them and
prayed over them.Then I got in the floor in the
hallway between their rooms and prayed. By this time I was wide awake so I
headed downstairs.

I cannot
begin to explain the pressing on my heart. This urgency for my daughter’s
purity and protection. It was stronger than I have felt in a long time.So I did the only thing I knew to do, grab my
Bible and start reading.I hit Proverbs
and since it was the 27th of the month, I started there.And boy, there is some meat in the first
verses!LOVE it…but where God begin to
have me settle was on down around verse 12.

The prudent sees danger and hides himself,
the simple go on and suffer for it.

In other words, when you see danger
you don’t knowingly walk into it! Especially, when your children are at
risk.I love what Master Procter and
Master Holland teach our karate students, “The best defense, is to not be
there.”But when you ARE there, you need
to know how to protect yourself.

The next verse that really stood out to me was verse 23. In
context it is speaking to wealth and being a wise steward, but I read this
verse, the Lord challenged me . The challenge was to see my children, and the
children he has placed in my care as my flock.

Verse 23 says:

Know
well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds.

While we want our girls to live for
and radiate Jesus right now at 15 and 12 years old, our goal is for them to
leave our home and be confident in who they are with Jesus. This is training
time.It is our calling as parents to train them,
discipline them, and protect them. Proverbs 22:6a says, Train up a child in the way they should go. That training will not
always be easy, or fun and honestly sometimes it is exhausting. But, the
conclusion of Proverbs 22:6 says

even
when he is old he will not depart from it.

I believe God used two events last week to
remind me that my guard was down a little in some areas.That I had “left the door open” so to speak.
In today’s world, his reminder was that I need to resist the urge to be a “logged
off” parent.I needed to be aware of what
is going on with my girls!

Several years ago He gave me a
lists of things to keep me from being THAT logged off parent.Maybe you need the reminder too.

2.Do I know what my girls are doing on-line?I make no apologies for “stalking” their Facebook,
Instagram and any other form of social media.And I don’t just mean what their pages look like.I look at their “followers”, “friends” and
find out what they are posting as well.

3.Text messages…….we spot check these.And no, my girls don’t like it but they know
right now we are not their friends. See number 4.

4.Be a parent not a friend.There will be plenty of time for friendship
later…right now, I am their mom charged with their care, training and
protection. Their father and I will answer to God for how we parented
them.

5.Be willing to pull the plug, cancel the account.

6.(this is a hard one) Ask other adult
friends/parents to TELL you, show you…contact you if they see your child doing questionable
things on-line that you may have missed.This one is hard…but as iron sharpens iron….

7.Encourage girls to use on-line activity to bring
glory to God.Yes, have fun…post fun
pictures be silly!BUT…keep it clean. If
it doesn’t pass the P4:8 check then it doesn’t need to be there.

Monday morning’s discovery of the
door being open was scary. Walking through the house, I made a mental list of “What
If’s”. It included the stray cats wondering in my house, the coyotes we know
roam the woods around us, random people walking up and down the street… my
imagination was in overdrive.We had
left that door open and exposed our family to who knows what.

Tuesday’s
morning dream was a check asking me if I was confident of the condition of my
children’s hearts.Their spiritual
heart.So Tuesday morning at breakfast I
made each person in my house look me in the eye and answer some questions.They kind of giggled at me, but could tell
the urgency I felt.

Interestingly, this passage was in my last blog post in July. I questioned using it again, but God keeps saying USE THIS...so here is I Peter 1:13-15 (ESV)

Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set
your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of
Jesus Christ.As obedient children, do
not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called
you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.